[GNC] Issue with Creating/Editing Scheduled Transactions with Multiple Displays?

[Tom Route36]

Hi all,

Just some additional info on this for anyone who might be interested.  
There *is* a solution of sorts for anyone who really doesn't like the 
way child windows reopen wherever they were last closed.  A big 
*warning* though: it's not ideal.  But here's what you can do.

Go to Edit -> Preferences -> Windows.  And turn off the Window Geometry 
option "Save window size and position".  By doing that, you'll stop your 
child windows from remembering where they were last closed.  For folks 
with multiple monitors, that should cause all child windows from that 
point on to always open on whatever monitor is currently being used for 
GnuCash (rather than wherever the child windows happened to be when they 
were last closed).  That's the good news.

The downside of this though is that any changes you make to a register 
(e.g., column widths) will be lost every time you close the register.  
That's the bad news.  Your customized register view options don't get 
saved anymore.

For myself, I'll probably keep the Window Geometry option turned on.  
I'll just have to remember which monitor I'm using for GnuCash each 
time.  But I thought I'd put this info out there for anyone who maybe 
prefers an alternate solution.

Tom


On 4/15/2026 1:49 AM, Randy Orrison wrote:
> Hi,
>
> As I suspected - the behavior is intentional.  On Windows, at least, most child windows of an app will open on the same monitor as the app, and that is the behavior I prefer.  I'm happy for the main window to open where it did previously (as long as that is visible!) but child windows should open on the same monitor as the main window.
>
> Since I often move my main GnuCash window around from monitor to monitor (on my laptop screen when I'm away from my desk, or typically screen 2 or 3 when I'm at my desk, depending on what I'm doing) the current behavior of having the child window open where it last was means it's basically random for me, and often far from where I'm looking at the time.
>
> I would be happy for child windows to remember their size, and open either centered on their parent window, or the screen of their parent window, or if the position could be remembered relative to the parent window (as a % of screen size, because my laptop screen is not the same resolution as my external monitors).
>
> Thanks,
>
> Randy
>
> On Wed, 15 Apr 2026, at 4:33 AM, John Ralls wrote:
>> That’s intended to be a feature. The positions of windows and dialogs are saved in the book’s state (i.e. .gcm) file so that folks who carefully arrange their workspace get it back every time they run GnuCash. It can be a problem when the monitor configuration changes.
>>
>> The other thing to know about Gtk is that all of the monitors combine to make a display with a single coordinate system whose origin is the upper left corner of the upper-left-most monitor and Gtk’s default is to open windows that don’t have parents at that origin; windows that do have parents (generally dialogs) default to open centered on the parent window.
>>
>> Regards,
>> John Ralls
>>
>>
>>> On Apr 14, 2026, at 15:46, Tom Route36<tom.route36 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi David,
>>>
>>> Thanks for this info.  I did some more testing here after your email; and it looks like that's what's happening.  "/*GnuCash remembers where the popup window was when it was last closed.*/" It doesn't matter if it's the Edit Scheduled Transaction window or the Reconcile window or any other popup/child window.  In every case the popup window always remembers which monitor it was on last when it got closed.
>>>
>>> I guess part of the confusion for me was that each of those windows remembers that even *after* GnuCash gets saved and closed and the system gets shut down.  My expectation was that when I boot the system up the next day and reopen GnuCash, that everything would be back to its normal baseline -- i.e., everything would show up on the primary monitor.  But that's not the case.  Oh well, live and learn.  I guess the mystery's solved.
>>>
>>> Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction on this,
>>> Tom
>>>
>>>